


Deleted Letter Number Five

by JulianObviouslyLovesToad



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: M/M, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 18:02:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7855417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulianObviouslyLovesToad/pseuds/JulianObviouslyLovesToad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garak writes a letter to Parmak, then promptly deletes it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deleted Letter Number Five

My Dearest Kelas,

If you find this letter, I hope it finds you well. If you’ve found this letter, I am clearly not well because something has happened to me between my desk and the pyre where it will be burned. However, I’ve found that getting my thoughts out and witnessing them before watching them float away as the insignificant embers they are has been more therapeutic than any counsel. And you, surely, don’t need a written testament to my feelings for you.

When I first met you, I didn’t even feel a contempt for you. That’s how insignificant I thought you were. I was proven wrong, wasn’t I? So many years later… I fear I’ve grown accustomed to being wrong. Daresay I’ve even come to like it on occasion.

Do you remember cleaning me after my little spell of madness with the rain and the medication? I’m sure you do. It was probably the first time you realized I was no longer a threat to you. Maybe you even realized that I never was. My dear, your touch lingered for days.

At first I felt violated. Then I was grateful. It wasn’t long after that that I started to ache for it, for you.

I remember your expression the first time we were intimate. You were so surprised that I crowded you against the back wall and started kissing up your neck ridges. You were even more surprised that I took you inside me. It could have been surprise at the fact that I could still consummate our forming bond standing up, if the way your hands were positioned were any indication – one bracing us on the wall behind you, the other clenched tightly on my hip. Either way, I was enthralled by the way you gasped and moaned and squeezed me.

For some time I wondered if you only slept with me out of fear, or worse; some misguided sense of duty. I disregarded the idea that it was out of pity because that was an idea my fragile mental state couldn’t have handled back then. If any of those were the case, I don’t think you’d have come back so many nights. I don’t think you’d have run your fingers through my hair and kissed my cheek when you settled in next to me.

Do you remember, my dear, the one time we visited Pythas? Of course you do, I shouldn’t ask. But I’m afraid I don’t remember it quite as well as I should, as I was overcome with grief. He could barely mumble, even with the painkiller you gave him. I wanted to draw him into my arms, but I didn’t want to cause him any more pain, and I shook with it. You led me outside and held me steady until Nal had closed the shoddy door and even shoddier blinds. You turned to lead me home, but I broke down into tears like a child. How long did you hold me there, in the middle of the street? Was it minutes? Hours? I thought we were all healing! I wanted to scream. I felt in that moment that your arms were the only thing keeping me from flying apart at the seams. Your embrace was what was holding my cells together, it seemed.

With how often you’re over these days, it’s almost as though you’ve moved in with me. Your presence certainly has. I keep finding things of yours around my little living space, and they never fail to make me smile. Even your soiled clothes make me giggle at times. Some may think me a madman if they could see me then, taking a dusty, muddy, and sometimes blood and tear stained tunic and trousers out to the wash, but it wouldn’t bother me a bit. Many cultures have likened love and lust to mania and madness, disability and virus. I’m not entirely inclined to disagree. It’s not an unpleasant way to go.

As I come to terms with never knowing just what happened to Palendine and deal with the fact that my closest friend from my time in exile has gotten married, your face often replaces hers and dear Julian’s in my daydreams. That is not to say that I love her any less, or that I’m merely using you as a replacement for them. You know as well as I do that we experience our longings simultaneously. That is probably a good part of why seeing Pythas like that had afflicted me with an inability to hold onto my emotions. It was very hard to reconcile that tattered husk with the beautiful young man he’d once been. And what if Palendine had the same fate? What if she was in too much pain to move, too embarrassed by a corpse-like appearance and lack of hair to come outside, and only had Kel to take care of her? Surely she knows that we’re all ugly in some capacity. But, I digress. Those are thoughts for another time.

I bet you never would have guessed that the first time you held my gaze for more than a few seconds, when you cut your finger for the dead and thanked me, I almost begged you for mercy. Ironic, isn’t it? What your eyes do to me, my dear… Especially when we’re in bed together, and you make me keep eye-contact while you blindly search for my palm to press yours to it. I almost want to ask you to be gentle with me, even though you always are. You make me feel vulnerable, and it’s wonderful. Terrifying. Amazing.

I caught on almost immediately that you were ashamed of your smaller-than-average prUt, but you have to be aware that it is absolutely perfect for our form of love-making. Not that you would ever be anything other than tender but, should you ever lose control, you would never damage those delicate tissues that close off the back of my purse. I’m well aware that that can be a danger of same-sex lovemaking, but not between us. I can grind down on you without having to restrain myself, without being jealous that females’ purses open up into vaginal canals with many, many more nerve endings. Strange how being with someone who is worried about being judged over the size of his genitalia has made me much more confident about my own. I hope that someday my newfound confidence will rub off on you.

I’ve gone on long enough. Really, all I wanted was to organize my feelings for you before I watched them burn on the pyre with all those other nagging thoughts. But here I am chronicling our entire relationship, right down to our lovemaking and the way you hold me with your eyes and your arms. If I continue, I may just die before I get a chance to burn this, and wouldn’t that be embarrassing? Though I do have one last thought before I end this silliness.

The one thing that I love most about you is the one thing you may not even think about. I’m sure you consider our lovemaking, the way we hold each other, even what can be done to make our dinner taste better. But what I doubt you consider is the smile you grace me with over the table. It makes me feel like a giddy child. With how you’ve stayed with me through my many meltdowns, my questioning of my sanity, and my inability to face my friends, you’re probably not aware of the thing that brightens my dreary world the most; the way you smile at the little things. A shape in your food, finding your missing sock, when I mend a tear on your tunic or scrubs. Some days that little smile is all I live for, as hard as that is to admit. When it’s turned on me, I know the sun will rise again and we’ll face the day together.

Eternally yours,  
Elim Garak

***

“Elim, what’s that?” Kelas asked as he approached, hands folded over his stomach, a pleasant but curious expression on his face.

“Oh, just another draft of one of those letters that I didn’t like.”

**Author's Note:**

> I kept telling myself I was going to finish the Garak/Dukat fic before I posted this, but nope. Telling myself shit doesn't work. 
> 
> Also, guess what I just read. It made me want to write things, even if the concept has been done to death.


End file.
